Four Warriors

Let's be honest, The Four Warriors is a low budget project that barely able to produce basic fantasy script. It's arduously slow and rigidly acted while the action part consists of the participant randomly flailing sword. Basically, it's a group of people reciting tired fantasy plot like a costume play.

The plot follows four soldiers, survivors of the Crusade who must now take arms again to defend the innocents. An hour is spent talking about stuffs off-screen, the mandatory evil abductor and some relics of the past. These guys practically narrate the entire time, and when it comes to interaction between characters, the acting is amateurish at best.

Merely talking will definitely not get the tension rolling, unfortunately the battle sequences don't fare better. Action is less than ten minutes of sword hurling, which is more painful to watch than to actually receive the blow. They also use slow motion to better capture the feeble combat.

This is, by all means, a small personal project from the cast, not remotely a fantasy flick for casual viewing.

Oh dear, they did try, bless them. This film is so bad its actually funny. If it had been marketed as a satire of the warrior/action film genre and had thrown in a few Monty Pyton style gags, it might have even been a minor hit.

By and large for me at least, the only way to watch this film from end to end is to treat it as a comedy of errors. Bad sets, bad costumes, hilarious fight scenes and generally chuckle worthy acting. Its the kind of production you might expect the Lower Putney Medieval Enactment Society to put on after a minor win at Lotto.

My advice, watch this one when you have had a few beers and you are in the mood for a laugh. You wont be disappointed. One out of ten from me.

The dialogue is a bit weak here and there, but not absolutely terrible, considering. The story itself is not particularly engaging. The acting itself was OK, all things considered, and above par for a low budget movie. The fight scenes, however, were ridiculous -- swing a sword like you mean it, man! The final fight was just as ridiculous.

I will say that I thought it was mostly well shot and edited, though, everything considered.

I found most of the characters personable which offers a certain amount of redemption to the film, and of them I liked the Mule although I spent the first 30 minutes wondering why they had him carrying around a bundle of wood when there is wood all over the flippin' place...

Fantasy has to be the most underused genre these days, it's so rare to see one grace the silver screen and even straight to DVD movies are few and far between compared to every other genre.

The Four Warriors tells the story of *Drumroll* four warriors who come to the aid of a town where all the men and children have been taken during the night by unseen forces.

Lots of character development is on display but very little else.

It all looks the part as they often do, from the locations to the costumes it certainly looks authentic but when it comes to actual sfx it lacks. Thankfully it avoids CGI but its practical sfx are really poor and let the movie down.

The Four Warriors is nothing to write home about and certainly doesn't do anything to help the representation of fantasy movies but isn't as bad as most of the reviews would suggest.

Bad, but not THAT bad.

The Good:

Settings are great

The Bad:

Kristian Nairn

"Demons" look terrible

Has no real flow

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

"God & fighting do not go together" has to be the most ironic line I've ever heard in a movie.............ever

OK, so this isn't a big budget production. In fact, it's probably a 'micro-budget' production. But what I really enjoyed about it is that the filmmakers didn't let that limit the scale of their story.

The people who made this film obviously love big, epic fantasy films... and they decided to make one despite the budgetary limitations. And they did a really good job!

Some of the baddies makeup effects don't quite come off and let it down a little, but this is an enjoyable ensemble film with some very nicely written bits of buddy-movie dialogue that could very easily be in a Hollywood blockbuster. And the relationships between the four warrior characters are nicely drawn, with the characters well acted.

It's also nicely shot, with good use of locations - which usually let lower budget films down.

If you only like fantasy films with $100m budgets and thousands of CGI warriors going into battle etc, then this probably won't be for you.

But if you enjoy fantasy stories and buddy movies give it a try.